1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a memo image managing apparatus, a memo image managing system and a memo image managing method, and particularly relates to a managing medium adapted to manage memo images captured from a portable terminal (information appliance) such as a portable telephone, a PHS or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a portable terminal such as a portable telephone, a PHS or the like equipped with capability of transmitting and receiving a digital image has become popular. Further, there are well known information appliances each comprising a built-in digital camera or an interface connectable to a compact digital camera. Such a digital camera which is embedded into or connectable to the portable terminal is useful in a variety of different scenes. In particular, it is known as its one application that the camera is used for capturing information about an environment thereof as a memo.
For example, as a first conventional art, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HE-10-276274 describes a telephone device capable of acquiring character information from an image data by the character recognition.
Also, as a second conventional art, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HE-05-22555 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HE-06-339003 respectively describe communication systems, each being capable of extracting address information such as a telephone number from an image data acquired by the character recognition function equipped in a terminal device and automatically transmitting it.
Moreover, as a third convention art, there are known Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HE-11-205515 (a communication system, a controlling method thereof and a computer-readable memory) and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. HE-10-210167 (a data registering method in a communication system, a communication system and a communication apparatus), each describing that the exchange of images between a portable telephone and a host station is enabled and character information can be extracted from an image by equipping the host station with the character recognition function.
The first conventional art as described above uses a portable terminal as a standalone, as a result of which an amount of memo images which can be stored and processed is inconveniently restrained small. Also, this portable terminal has difficulty in causing memo images which have been collected by a user to be shared more widely with the third persons. Specifically, in the event that an exchange of memo images among other users by using these portable terminals is performed, the users must communicate with one another in a one-to-one relationship for the exchange of memo images. Accordingly, it is impossible to simultaneously exchange memo images among a plurality of users, so that the exchange of memo images can not be popularized.
The second conventional art disadvantageously limits information which can be manipulated or handled by its system to the address information, and therefore can not extract and use the other information such as a title representative of a main purpose of a memo and a URL of a home page described on the memo so that registered memo images can not be effectively utilized by performing retrieval therein.
The third conventional art is not intended to manage memo images, so that, similar to that of the first conventional art, it is impossible to exchange the memo images among a plurality of users and to retrieve any memo image from a large amount of accumulated memo images. Therefore, it is hard to say the memo images thus acquired are effectively utilized among one or more users.